Residents walk through their neighborhood after it was damaged by severe thunderstorm winds in Kansas City, Mo., Friday, May 2, 2008. A powerful storm system packing tornadoes and heavy winds roared across the nation's midsection early Friday, killing at least seven people in Arkansas including a teenager crushed by a tree while she slept. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner) less

Residents walk through their neighborhood after it was damaged by severe thunderstorm winds in Kansas City, Mo., Friday, May 2, 2008. A powerful storm system packing tornadoes and heavy winds roared across the ... more

Photo: Orlin Wagner

Image 2 of 3

Makayla Flowers, 6, feeds her dog, Dottie, while friends and family pick through debris from her tornado-destroyed home, Friday, May 2, 2008 in Center Ridge, Ark. (AP Photo/Mike Wintroath)

Makayla Flowers, 6, feeds her dog, Dottie, while friends and family pick through debris from her tornado-destroyed home, Friday, May 2, 2008 in Center Ridge, Ark. (AP Photo/Mike Wintroath)

Photo: Mike Wintroath

Image 3 of 3

8 die as tornadoes hit Arkansas

1 / 3

Back to Gallery

Violent storms rolling across the nation's midsection unleashed tornadoes, high winds and hail in four states and killed eight people in Arkansas on Friday, including a teenager who died when a tree fell into her bedroom as she slept.

The storms late Thursday and early Friday ripped off roofs and toppled train cars near Kansas City, Mo.; pelted parts of Oklahoma with hail; and knocked over tents at a popular open-air market in east Texas. Severe thunderstorms were moving into Kentucky and could make for a wet Kentucky Derby today.

Greg Carbin, a meteorologist for the national Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said as many as 25 tornadoes may have cut through stretches of Oklahoma, Arkansas, eastern Kansas and western Missouri.

Five of those killed were in two north-central Arkansas counties, Conway and Van Buren, that also saw fatalities from a devastating tornado Feb. 5. Gov. Mike Beebe declared those counties and five others disaster areas.

"This year it just seems like we're getting pounded," Van Buren County Sheriff Scott Bradley said.

He said a man, a woman and a preschool-age child died when the storm hit their house just south of Bee Branch.

"There wasn't anything left," Bradley said. "It was demolished."

A father and two sons died in Conway County when a possible tornado hit their mobile home. A twister demolished a chicken farm in Center Springs, leaving thousands of dead birds on the ground.

Near the Oklahoma line in a working-class neighborhood of Siloam Springs, a 15-year-old girl died in the early morning when apparent straight-line winds toppled a tree into her family's mobile home. She and her 10-year-old brother were sleeping in bunk beds; the boy survived with minor injuries.

"She was on (the top bunk). He was on bottom. When it fell it just crushed her and pinned her on top of him," with a mattress between them, said Chad Tilghman, who lives across the street and helped pull the boy from the storm debris.

The seventh death was reported in Pulaski County, south of Little Rock.

Nearly 6,000 homes and businesses lost power in Arkansas, and about 40,000 lost power at the peak of the storms in the Kansas City area, where two small tornadoes touched down and several minor injuries were reported.

Tornadoes appeared to touch down in at least three east Texas towns, uprooting trees, flipping cars and yanking down power lines.

A tornado hit Canton, Texas, as visitors began to show up for a popular open-air market that draws thousands each month. The winds toppled tents and snapped power lines, but the market was soon back in business.

A day before the Kentucky Derby, some race fans at Churchill Downs sought shelter Friday when the storms arrived in Louisville. The Weather Service issued a tornado warning for parts of far western Kentucky, and meteorologist John Gordon said more waves of storms were expected through this afternoon.

Rain was possible until about the time the race is scheduled to start, 3 p.m. PDT, but Gordon said he didn't think it would be extreme enough to affect the race.